Facebook announced yesterday that it will partner with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) this holiday season, and with the BBB National Programs' National Advertising Division (NAD) long term, through two new projects directed at building trust between consumers and companies and helping customers shop safely.  

For the holidays, Facebook and the BBB have partnered on a “Shop Safe, Shop Smart” campaign. In connection with the campaign, Facebook will “run ads and organic content on Facebook, Instagram and various social media channels to promote actionable tips on how to spot, avoid and report scams online.” The tips will be featured on the campaign’s website each week, available at www.bbb.org/shopsafe.

In addition to its holiday initiative, Facebook has partnered with NAD long term to “encourage advertisers to follow [Facebook's] rules and use more ethical marketing tactics.” The partnership will allow NAD to directly share the outcomes of specific ad campaigns with Facebook faster, which will in turn allow Facebook’s enforcement teams to take action on the ads reported to them that violate Facebook’s policies. The partnership is expected to help “encourage more ethical practices among advertisers and across the digital advertising industry.”

According to NAD Director Laura Brett, the partnership will be particularly beneficial for NAD’s Fast-Track SWIFT cases, and NAD expects that as a result, “even more interested parties will be leveraging this process to more quickly identify ad campaigns that violate Facebook’s truth-in-advertising policies.”